Construction Cost per Square Foot for a Courthouse

In an ongoing series to maintain the most updated construction cost information available to us from RSMeans, the leader in construction cost estimating, new data has come out for the construction cost per square foot for Courthouses and similar facilities.

Construction Cost per square foot Courthouse March 2011

As you can see, the highest cost per square foot is in New York City at $269.00 per square foot while the low end in Winston-Salem is at $154.41 with a median of $208 per square foot. These costs are higher than ordinary market rate office buildings because of the security requirements in their programs.

Programming and designing facilities of all kinds is a unique versatility that EVstudio has among it’s multiple offices working on commercial projects across the United States, so if you would like more information about your project, please contact us and we will be happy to help.

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4 thoughts on “Construction Cost per Square Foot for a Courthouse”

  1. Phil,
    I do not have any recent information from RSMeans, however, it a fairly reliable approach is to use a construction cost index to extrapolate costs forward to the current year from past data. For example, Mortenson provides this index for a number of cities: http://www.mortenson.com/cost-index. I don’t know where your location is, but you could take the cost data from 2011 and multiply by the adjusted index from that site and arrive at a reasonable starting point for a budget for your project. Bear in mind that Courthouses come in all shapes and sizes (and levels of finish) depending on jurisdiction and objectives of the community, so you would want to further adjust upwards or downwards from the mean based on those other factors. I hope that helps!

  2. Do you have updated figures for new courthouse construction. The
    Last I saw was March 2011. My research has figures all over the place. We are voting on a new courthouse. Thanks from a layman. Phil Harris

  3. Everett,

    Thanks for your inquiry. The cost per square foot you see in these charts is for the buildings themselves and does not include land costs, site development, soft costs, financing costs or FF&E costs. This data is an average for this construction type based on index pricing for the combinations of various construction line items. It is not broken out in any way in its own right, however, RS Means is a wealth of information on every type of line item pricing that you can use to determine a sophisticated pricing budget. Go to http://www.rsmeans.com for more information.

    Best of luck!

    -Dean

  4. Everett Gustafson

    I am in the process of designing a courthouse for one of my clients. I would like to use the sf cost for a courthouse to budget the project. To be assured that I have all the costs included that are necessary, can you give me a breakdown of what elements are included in your sf cost.

    Thanks

    Ev Gustafson

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